


Metaphor : Man

by Her_Madjesty



Category: Peter Pan - J. M. Barrie
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Canon Compliant, F/M, Inspired by Pygmalion and Galatea (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Reincarnation tag applies to a single character, These tags make no goddamn sense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:55:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27737242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Her_Madjesty/pseuds/Her_Madjesty
Summary: Depending on who you speak to once you take to Neverland’s shores, there is either no port in the bay, or there is one.
Relationships: Wendy Darling/James Hook
Comments: 8
Kudos: 28





	Metaphor : Man

**Author's Note:**

  * For [perennial](https://archiveofourown.org/users/perennial/gifts).



> Happy slightly-belated birthday, perennial! Did you ask for a puzzle box fic? No? My bad /jk. On a slightly more serious note, thank you for all of the kindness you've shared. I could not be happier to have written this for you. I hope you like it! If you're looking for something a little more straightforward/romantic, just say the word - it may take me a bit, but I'll do my best!
> 
> Now, for the semantics: at the risk of being wildly pretentious, the title makes use of a membrum, or a colon as a rhetorical device. It "translates," if the word can be applied here, as "Metaphor is to Man." My thanks to Erin Morgenstern for supplying the seedlings for the aforementioned correlation.

  
  
PART 01: GENTLEMAN STARKEY

Depending on who you speak to once you take to Neverland’s shores, there is either no port in the bay, or there is one.

The children in the forest, who abhor even reminders of civility so much so that they confine them to make-believe, cannot lay eyes on it. They stray past those bustling streets and see war paths they have already tread; trees to slip in and out of again.

Neverland’s pirates, on the other hand, know the port so intimately that it is to them as the jungle is to the children: a respite. There, a visitor can watch mermaids come and linger by the docks. They barter seashell necklaces and bushels of shrimps to merchants who don’t quite know where they are but who know better than to turn down a good deal.

It is Gentleman Starkey we follow into this port today. It is one of the rare spans of time when Pan, damn him, is away from Neverland, and the pirates’ captain indisposed. Thus, the pirates wander freely, chasing rabbits they mistake for Lost Boys as eagerly as the bottom of a bottle.

Gentleman Starkey, with his once-usher manners and his public school accent, tips his hat to even the mermaids that he passes as he descends from the _Jolly Roger_ , if only to leer at them as they giggle and wiggle their fingers back.

It is easy to follow Gentleman Starkey away from that single-ship dock and into the heart of the port. Here, to the left, we can see several inns with their windows open wide, for the cool air of an absent Pan’s autumn is a welcomed escape from the blistering summers he brings home with him. Out in the street, several shop owners have sent their youngest daughters to recommend their wares to one another. Gentleman Starkey pauses at one and manages to secure a well of ink clearly scavenged from Neverland’s northern shore in exchange for a kiss to a pretty lady’s hand – and one of the silver buttons on his cuff.

(The pirates have never known whether it is the merchants’ children, what with their loving families, or the mere concept of a peopled port itself that keeps the Lost Boys and their ilk away, but they will not balk at one of the few gifts Neverland is willing to give her non-Pan residents. Heaven and Hell alike know that she has a favorite and that she is inclined to indulge him above all others.)

At the end of the first lane out of the merchants’ quarters, with its back windows kissing a slow slope leading into the nearby jungle, rests Gentleman Starkey’s prize: _Le Raconteur_. The remains of some ship come long before the _Jolly Roger_ rests on its stern, with its bow cutting proudly into the afternoon air. Already, Gentleman Starkey can see his brothers making themselves known: there is Skylights sipping a dark brown ale in one of the front rocking chairs; there is Robt. Mullins and Bill Jukes arguing over a game of cards; there is Cecco, complaining to an indulgent serving woman that the limoncello here is sub-par when compared to that which he had in his native country (but who is drinking a glass, anyway).

The men greet Gentleman Starkey with underwhelming grunts or complete disinterest. Such is the way of brothers who’ve walked arm in arm in this timeless place. Gentleman Starkey makes his order known to a serving woman Cecco is not harassing and makes a private bet with himself, as he sits, as to whether or not Mullins and Jukes will be speaking to one another by the time the day comes to an end.

He gives these men and the other few in _Le Raconteur_ half an ear as he waits for his drink, listening instead to the croon of a sad violin off in one corner. It is in the middle of thanking the serving woman for giving him his drink that any gossip of interest catches his attention.

“Did you hear?” some voice murmurs from across the room. “There’s a new oddity down by the harbor.”

Gentleman Starkey cocks his head. It’s one of the shopkeeps whispering to some his waitress, his eyes as wide as a boy’s.

“Isn’t there always an oddity?” the serving woman replies in a voice that would be laughing if it wasn’t so tired.

“Yeah, but this one’s different,” the shopkeep says with a hiccup. He glances around the room, making eye contact with Gentleman Starkey before looking, almost abruptly, away. Starkey doesn’t hear what he says next, but the serving woman’s cocked eyebrow is more than enough to raise the stakes of the conversation from “a break in the tedium” to “passably interesting.”

After the serving woman has come and gone, Starkey lifts a lazy hand and sends a drink of his own to the shopkeep’s table. Within the next fifteen minutes, the man comes to join him at his table, eyeing both the drink and the pirate with equal degrees of trepidation.

“An oddity?” Gentleman Starkey prompts. He has long forgone the need for introductions in this place; while he may not know the shopkeep’s name, there is simply no need to ask. Either he’ll be dead at the end of a Lost Boy’s blade, at the arrow of one of Neverland’s natives, or in the jaws of one of its animals.

(He may make his way home, someday, but stories of those Neverland lets leave are few and far between.)

“An oddity,” the man says with a sharp nod. “Appeared just this morning, looking out towards the sea. Surprised you didn’t see it on your way in. It looks like a woman, but there’s no rhyme or reason to why she’s appeared. Looks like any regular bird, if you ask me.”

Gentleman Starkey takes a long swig from his glass. When he sets it aside, he wipes the drink from his mouth and pops the pearl stud out of his left ear. He leaves it on the table for a second, maybe less, before the serving woman tucks it into her pocket and his glass into her washing bin.

“Take me to it,” he says with an authority he does not have – but then again, the man with the authority has confined himself to his cabin, and a pirate is a pirate is a pirate, when all is said and done.

The shopkeep nearly trips himself in his haste as he stands.

Gentleman Starkey smiles.

*

It is not unusual for Neverland to conjure strange additions to herself at her leisure. More often than not, however, those items she brings forth have purpose. For a month, there were rafts on the far side of the island, near Skull Rock, that the Lost Boys turned into a near-pirate ship of their own. Before that, a third of the jungle transformed into a cherry-riddled forest (and though the weather never adjusted to better suit the cherry’s natural climes, the residents of the port still enjoyed cherry wine for several months after the harvest). Before even that – though Gentleman Starkey cannot remember it himself – it is said that there were not beasts on the island but rather lizards so large that they threatened to sink Neverland under their weight. Smee has one of their scales tucked into his rucksack, and for all that he is easy to manhandle and abuse, none of the crew have dared to try and take it from him.

A statue, in light of this terrifying history, seems almost a pointless growth on a dream world’s unblemished face.

Gentleman Starkey looks up at this marble woman with the shopkeep at his side and squints, attempting to understand.

“I don’t know her,” he says to the shopkeep, after a good long while of staring.

“Like I said, ne’ther do most in the port,” says the shopkeep.

Gentleman Starkey turns away from the man and crosses his arms over his chest with a frown.

She’s a fair woman, that’s sure enough – curls pinned to the back of her head like a proper lady. He’s not so impolite as to guess at a lady’s age, but she’s certainly grown. Her dress is brought up fine around her shoulders, and it drops to her ankles with all of the waves of the sea itself. Starkey looks down and is almost surprised when the stone fabric comes to an end in ruffles instead of wavy foam.

One of her hands is pressed against her heart, he notices, while the other is held out towards the horizon, as though she is waiting for someone to take it. She rests on her side, looking for all the world as though she has been struck and left wanting of a helping hand.

Starkey – considers. For a moment. But boredom weighs heavy on his mind, and he cannot bring himself to offer her the assistance it seems she is asking for.

With a grunt, he sends the shopkeep scurrying back into town. Then, with a smart turn of his heel, he makes his way back to the _Jolly Roger_.

On deck already, he can see Smee balancing a book on one knee and a flagon on the other. Guadjo, or so they call him, offers him a lazy salute as he makes his way back onto the deck.

Gentleman Starkey nods his head in return and continues his march, moving, even as Smee raises his head, to the door of the captain’s cabin.

The first mate rises and has a hand on Starkey’s elbow before he reasonably should be able to, but Starkey’s stopped from his knock, anyway. He looks down at Smee with a glare and finds himself irritated – more so than usual – when the man does not fall back.

“W – what’s so important that it requires the cap’n’s attention?” Smee asks, his stutter not giving away the sternness in his tone.

“Something new on shore,” Starkey bites, his voice flat with that same perpetuate boredom – though there’s a quiver, now; the barest hint of enthusiasm at something to do. “Figure the captain ought to make of it what he will himself.”

“I – is it Pan?” Smee asks.

“No.” Starkey yanks his arm free and knocks three times of the captain’s door. “It’s a statue. Of a lady.”

Smee furrows his brow and opens his mouth, but the deed is already done. Starkey falls back from the door and places a hand on the hilt of his sword as he waits. The whole of the ship – or, at least, the whole of those still on board – grows quiet, their ears straining for the barest hint of sound.

For a long while, there is nothing. Then, the door to the cabin snicks open to reveal less than an inch of darkness – and the tip of a hook.

“Captain,” Gentleman Starkey drawls, his hand still caressing his sword. “Shore’s got a surprise for you.”

The hook slips further out into the open air and is followed, shortly, by a mess of black curls and one ungodly, blue eye.

“What?”

“Shore’s got a surprise for you.” Starkey eyes the hook and counts the seconds between the captain’s breaths. “One of the ‘keeps says Neverland conjured it up ‘erself, but no one can figure why.” The public school boy in him slips out, and he resists the urge to tuck his tongue between the gap in his two front teeth.

The sight that is Captain Jas. Hook pulling himself from the depths is a wondrous thing. It takes even Starkey’s familiar eyes too long to separate him from the shadows, until he is there in front of him, pulling his old red coat on over his bare shoulders.

(No one dares to mention the dark shadows beneath the captain’s eyes. No one dares even think on them. For Captain Hook does not grow tired of his position. Captain Hook does not falter. He postures and spits like a hissing cat; he rallies his men to his cause. He is as permanent a fixture in Neverland as Pan, even if he is not so beloved.)

Starkey leans back less than half an inch as the captain pokes him in the chest with his hook. “Take me to it,” Captain Hook all but sighs. “If this proves a measure of nonsense, Starkey, I look forward to making not a statue but a scarecrow out of your corpse.”

Despite himself, Gentleman Starkey swallows – hard. Some of the light trips back into his captain’s eye at the scent of his fear, though, and it is that more than almost anything else – save the hook the moves from his chest to his back – that sends Starkey scurrying back onto the docks faster than a cat from the water.

Their march down to the beach sends the mermaids scurrying and more than a few shopkeeps back to their homes. It looks, Starkey knows, like a piratical raid – and he doesn’t mind, no siree, but he’s far more concerned with the state of the captain to indulge in those feelings of misplaced pride all that much.

It is – a relief to see the captain out of his cabin, but his expression does little to reassuring those crew members who’ve snuck onto the dock to keep an eye on him. It is not the murdering expression that they have come to know and fear (love), nor is it the clever expression that bids bad luck for any who might cross Jas. Hook.

It is…

Something else.

Melancholy, if you asked Gentleman Starkey, but you couldn’t bribe him with treasure nor women nor drink to say as much out loud.

The captain’s pace slows as they approach the statue, still lounging with her hand outstretched on her pedestal. Starkey falls back as he watches the captain raise up a hand. Those pirates that have come with them – few in number, but present – see the captain’s thumb glance over the bare nameplate before he returns his study to the lady’s face.

“Do you know who she is, cap’n?” Starkey asks. In the silence that follows, he fiddles for his pipe and busies himself stuffing it with tobacco.

There’s something disconcerting about the way sound of the captain’s breath is stolen by the ocean waves, but that’s another thing Starkey’s not inclined to think about for too long.

When he glances up again, the captain’s gaze has...drifted. That one good hand comes up to caress the lady’s just-exposed ankle – and Starkey wonders if he should look away, just to give the man the illusion of privacy.

“I have a theory,” says Jas. Hook in the heat in the afternoon. He stares at the statue for a moment longer, then turns away and brushes past the Gentleman, then the rest of the crew. It is a surprisingly non-violent gesture; Starkey nearly stumbles back merely on habit. When he does not fall to the ground with a hook embedded in his belly, he turns to watch the captain stalk back towards the _Jolly Roger_.

“Good going, Starkey,” grouses Guadjo. “It’ll be you taking up my swabbing duties if he sees fit to throw a hissy o’er this.”

Gentleman Starkey waves away the man’s concern and doesn’t bother watching as he wanders off. Instead, he follows the last of the captain’s red coat back into his cabin and holds his breath.

After a matter of seconds, light spills out of the fine colored glass decorating the captain’s quarter’s windows.

Gentleman Starkey smiles. He kicks at the sand with a happy huff, then heads back down the dock into town, whistling as he goes.

(The statue watches him as he goes. It isn’t the right time – not yet – but it will be. Soon. For if there is anything Neverland is beholden to that is not Peter Pan, then it is the island’s sense of dramatic timing.)

PART 02: MISTER SMEE

If you ask him, he’ll tell you honest; he does love his captain.

Smee loves Jas. Hook like he loves the edge of a knife – with fervent respect and care. That this type of love is inherently tied to fear is not his concern; he will walk to the edge of the plank, the edge of the jungle, the edge of the Lost Boy’s secret camp, and he will only complain to the point where that hook comes into contact with his neck and his captain’s mouth starts to twitch with amused irritation.

More to the point, though:

Smee comes to his captain’s quarters the night after Gentleman Starkey introduces him to the statue because he loves (fears) him. He knocks once, then enters without permission, because while the other members of the crew will receive a hook to the belly, he will only receive a piercing look from Jas. Hook’s eyes and the threat – but not enaction – of violence.

The inside of the captain’s cabin is, to put it frankly, a mess. Tobacco drippings rest alongside discarded fish bones rested alongside spools and spools of linens that the pirates couldn’t sell for a profit if they tried. In the center of the room is a desk; in the corner is a bed; and at the heart of it all, in between candles and pearls and several coats, there is Jas. Hook.

More importantly, there’s a book. Several books, in fact, that even Smee does not dare to ask about. Instead, as he sees his captain’s good hand flying over those pages, he tucks his own hands behind his back and waits a polite ten seconds.

“Cap’n?”

Hook looks up at once, blue eyes flashing. Smee ignores the sharp taste of metal on his tongue and takes one cautious step forward, instead. “W-what are you r-reading, cap’n?”

Hook throws himself down into a plush, overstuffed chair, taking one of the books with him as he goes. “Do you know, Smee,” he asks, his face half-obscured by shadows, “that I have kept an account of every misadventure Neverland has forced us to endure over time?”

“I-I didn’t know, cap’n,” Smee lies.

He can sense more than see his captain roll his eyes. “I have recorded every change that has taken to these shores. I have the exact date that the port itself sprang forth from Neverland’s benevolent brain.” He spits these final three words, bringing his feet up onto his desk as he does. “The arrival of this...oddity is perhaps the smallest modification the island has made in over a century. There are no other records of changes so small.”

“M-m-m-maybe there are others,” Smee offers, tightening his grip on his own hands. “We h-haven’t checked for statues anywhere else; w-we can head to shore –”

Hook waves an idle hand. “We can, we can, we can. But I do not think we will find anything of note.” He frowns as he flips another page.

They reside in silence for a good minute longer, the candles dripping lower and spattering their wax on the floor.

“D – do you know who she is, cap’n?” Smee asks.

Hook looks up – and for just a second, maybe less, looks _exhausted_. “I have a theory,” he says, echoing his words from the shore. He motions Smee towards his desk with his hook, and Smee does not hesitate to join him. Fish bones snap beneath his feet as he scurries to the captain’s side.

Jas looks at him for a long moment as he narrowly avoids slipping, then slides one of the books towards him.

Smee takes off his glasses, rubs them against his shirt, and then –

Does not read so much as looks at the few sketches that have appeared in the book’s margins.

This page in particular is marked both with a record of the ship’s inventory and several small depictions of those crew members Jas. Hook has sent to their deaths. There are a few familiar faces, though, that are neither pirates nor those few faces that make themselves known to the captain from the port.

One, in particular, stands out.

“Red Handed Jill?” Smee looks up at his captain, confusion knitted into his brow.

Jas hums under his breath. “What other girl-creature has come to Neverland of her own volition?” he asks his first mate. “It would make sense for the island to capture her likeness, though blast and damn me if I would know why she’s grown.” He sneers, here, before rubbing his face with his hand. “And of course she would be kept here, away from where Pan might spot her and remember her or mourn her.”

“It’s a memorial, then,” Smee says, nodding. He nods for a good couple of seconds longer than he should before a thought pops into his head. “Is she dead, then, cap’n?”

“Who is to say?” remarks Hook, drawing his shared book back and tucking it into his desk. “She is not in Neverland, and we are not in England; it is impossible for us to know one way or another. And frankly, I do not see why it should matter.” He leans back into the darkness again, lifting up his hook to examine it with care.

Smee watches him as he goes.

The silence, this time around, feels...anticipatory.

There is a knock at the door. Hook motions for Smee to go, and so he does, rushing across the same dirtied floor to peek out at who might be joining them.

It is Starkey again – drunker, this time, but with his hat held in his hands.

“Sorry to disturb,” he says in a voice that shakes (Smee hears Hook right himself immediately). “But the statue, cap’n –”

“We went earlier, Starkey,” Hook snarks, “You were the one who directed me to the blasted thing, or does your wine-addled brain not remember?”

“But cap’n,” Starkey takes one cautious step back. “It’s moved!”

Smee – blinks.

The sound of chair legs against wood digs into his head like an oyster knife, and then there’s the captain at his side, the captain out the door. He watches as Starkey is backed into the nearest ship’s railing (but the threat, somehow, is tired).

“What do you mean,” Captain Hook demands, “ _moved_?

*

It is not rare for the pirates to storm Neverland’s lone dock port, but they rarely do so twice in one day. Smee runs to the docks alongside his captain and wonders, idly, whether or not he should start to keep a journal, as well, for as convinced as he is that this is something they have done before, he cannot for the life of him remember when the last time they did it was.

The statue almost glows in the last hints of the day’s light, lit up with the pinks and golds Neverland allows to peek through her gray clouds. The men come to a stop one after another, leaving only Smee and Hook to carry on forward.

Smee, far enough back and short enough besides, cannot remark one way or another as to whether or not it has changed positions, if only because his view is blocked by larger bodies. His captain, however, goes still some good three feet in front of the statue and frowns the frown of a man well-vexed.

Smee manages to bully his way to his side, where he can examine the statue more closely.

The lady is much as she was. She still wears her sea-foam dress and her fine coat; her hair is still tucked in its neat bun behind her head. But where she once lounged, she now lies on her side, as though she’s been shot and worn of her fervor. Her head is pillowed by one of her arms, and those eyes, so lovingly carved, have fallen shut. One hand still stretches out towards the sea – towards the _Jolly Roger_ , if one wants to be pedantic about it, but Smee has always been the man with whom pedants fear to engage.

Smee turns to comment on the merits of a statue falling asleep, but his tongue falls still in his mouth.

One look at his captain tells him more than it should.

Even the worst of the crew’s disgruntled chatter falls still as the sight of Hook’s paling face. Smee is among the first to straighten as he comes back to himself, motioning the men forward with a hand.

“Check to see if she’s breathing.”

Smee doesn’t bother to raise his eyebrow; doesn’t even feel the urge. He steps forward and raises one tentative hand – then pulls back.

“Feels improper to touch a lady,” he mutters under his breath before pulling off his glasses again. He places them in front of the lady’s nose – standing on his toes to manage – and waits several seconds.

The glass fogs.

Smee stumbles backwards with a cry, nearly losing his grip as he goes. There is Starkey’s hand at his back as he falls, while the captain stares on, looking between him and the statue.

“She’s b-breathing, cap’n!” cries Smee, unsure, suddenly, whether or not it’s a good idea to put his glasses back on.

Hook returns his attention to the statue, his trademark frown curling into a snarl. “What magic is this?” he demands in a tone that expects an answer.

The lady does not raise her head, nor does she respond. Hook marches forward, his weapon of choice brandished to better come and rest beneath the curve of her chin.

“Who are you?” he asks. “What are you? Why are you here?!”

(Though he will never allow himself to think on it, Smee hears the wonder mixed with the fury in that tone.)

A pirate towards the back of the landing party gasps. Hook takes one step backwards as the lady’s chest rises – and then falls again. She remains as still as she was before, but it is impossible not to stare, now, at the way the stone moves without a sound.

Hook looks at her, then back to his crew.

“Back to the ship,” he orders in a low tone. The pirates who do not hear him are pushed towards the _Jolly,_ anyway, encouraged to avoid a grizzly fate by those closest to the man.

Smee waits until only he and the captain and Starkey remain, the drunken pirate enraptured by the lady’s steady breathing, his hands shoved into the pockets of his coat.

Smee knows that of all of them, he is ever the only one allowed to stay; the one for whom orders are orders except for when they aren’t.

Between two blinks, there is a slash across Starkey’s throat; the mark of a man who has misunderstood his place.

Starkey looks at the both of them before he collapses in the sand. His gaze is long and slow. Smee watches him fix his attention on the lady again as he sinks to his knees.

He dies with a smile on his lips, as though he knows a secret that he will never share.

By the time Hook looks away from his victim, Smee has arranged his face into something dispassionate. As the captain takes out a handkerchief to wipe the blood from his hook, Smee does not let his thoughts linger on the fate of those men who die in Neverland. Instead, he finds himself studying Starkey’s lines in the sand and wondering how they will translate when pressed onto a page.

“Smee,” the captain says, drawing his attention. Smee looks up at the man, outlined in gold and red by Neverland’s temperamental sun. “Return to the ship, as I ordered.”

“You won’t be wanting the company, captain?” Smee waits for the captain to look at him again, but the man’s eyes are only for the lady, still asleep on her pedestal.

“I believe I already have it.”

Smee hesitates, then shrugs and does as he is bid. As he walks away, he hears the soft cave of a body on sand – but he does not look back.

He loves his captain like a man loves the edge of a blade. A blade is entitled to its secrets, ‘less it harms the one who brandishes it.

PART 03. JAS. HOOK

Night settles on Neverland like a blanket pulled over a sleeping child. Even with Pan gone for the season and the chill in the air, Jas finds himself more comfortable with this darkness, this shore, this breath than he has been in a long time.

The statue of the lady who is and is not Red Handed Jill rests beside him. He presses his back against that cool marble and listens – and though, when he looks up, he can see her still breathing, he finds he cannot hear her over the sound of the crashing waves.

Jas has lived longer than Captain Hook, but he suspects that Captain Hook will live longer than him. His face still holds in its line-less array, though he is far enough removed from his own boyhood that he cannot even remember it. There are distant days at university somewhere in the back of his head, but it’s much been obscured by Neverland’s fog and years – centuries upon centuries – of insufficient piracy.

(He is the most feared man in the drink because he is the only man in the drink, or so he thinks to himself on the days when he is most maudlin.)

And now, he is down by the sea, having abandoned his ship and his crew and any sense of tyranny in favor of the soft breathing of a stone woman.

It’s pitiful, but he cannot bring himself to rise and leave.

“Tell me a story,” he demands of the statue.

For a long while, there is nothing but the sound of the ocean. Jas risks another look behind him – back at that sea-foam fabric, at that outstretched palm – and almost chides himself for his surprise.

For the lady’s eyes have opened at his behest.

The old feeling stirs in his belly, one that he has not indulged in a long time. He sits, simultaneously chastened and victorious, as the lady blinks once – twice – and again.

She turns to look at him before she speaks – and Jas. Hook feels as though her gaze could pierce him to his soul.

***

Once upon a time, a man finds himself locked in a cell beneath a bustling port.

This man is both a man and a metaphor, but he is first and foremost a person, and come morning, he is going to hang.

*

Once upon a time, a young woman living in a bustling port finds herself in possession of three items:

  1. A broken heart

  2. A determined will

  3. The ring of keys her father took with him to work, where he sat guarding prisoners in their cells




*

Once upon a time, a man and a woman fall in love over the course of a single night. Before the sun has the chance to rise, he presses kiss after kiss to her knuckles and collarbone; she tangles her fingers in his drip-candle hair; and he swears to her in the depths of the darkest night that he will come home to her, if only she will let him.

***

“And did she ever let him?” rasps Jas Hook, staring up at a sky full of stars that he no longer recognizes.

The statue of the woman smiles and flexes those outstretched fingers now dangling next to the captain’s head. “It was never a matter of letting,” she tells him, in a voice just barely louder than the waves. “It was a matter of choosing when to come back again.”

Jas looks up at her, one eyebrow raised.

The statue keeps on smiling, her good humor never faltering. Her outstretched hand reaches for something beyond the horizon.

Jas feels his gaze move towards it from her. She wears no rings – and it feels wrong, somehow. Almost against his will, he wiggles a small black, opal ring off of his pinkie and, with a glance back for permission, fits it onto her left hand.

The statue sighs – a quiet, happy thing. Jas traces the back of those marbled knuckles and feels...light. Relieved.

Happy.

He grips her hand tightly in his own – and there is the horizon, bursting towards them; there is the _Jolly Roger_ , disappearing in the distance; there is the universe, on display for the both of them; they, two drops; they, infinite planets; they, –

INTERMISSION

Once upon a time, but not quite as long ago as you think, a man stands before a ship.

He has a hat in his hands – a small thing made of thin fabric, but enough, on its better days, to keep the worst of the rain from his head.

He has orders from a captain that, before the rising of the sun, he is to board the ship he stands before and serve as an honest sailor. He does not know when he will return to this port; if he will ever return to this port; if he should ever want to.

In a small home not far from the sea, a captain of a woman is asleep in her bed. This man knows that she will wake to find him gone and mourn him until he returns, if he is ever able. He knows the curve of her spine beneath his fingers, the warmth of her mouth against his, the wit that lives in her mouth and her eyes –

(The kiss that’s settled in the corner of her mouth)

– and he argues with himself that he still must go; he made a commitment and he is bound by those thin shreds of honor he still has to go.

But he does not want to.

He twists the opal ring she placed on his finger in those hours between dusk and dawn. And he looks to the stars and makes them promise – _promise –_ the one day, he will make his way home again.

The man boards his ship.

He does not look behind him.

*

A month and a half later, news reaches the port of a storm and a sinking, and a lonely pirate of a woman weeps for hours for reasons she cannot explain. She gropes for a ring no longer on her finger, then reaches out – out and out and out towards the fickle ocean and its many ships and the lives that have sunk into its depths.

 _I will find you,_ she swears to the sea and to the stars, _I will find you, and I will bring you home again_.

*

And the stars hear her.

And the stars hear him.

And while the stars are not the most benevolent of forces when it comes to those they do not love, there is nothing more compelling to them than a sense of dramatic storytelling.

A sense of dramatic timing.

So they pull some strings.

Set the wheels into motion.

And while their Most Beloved cheats a little to try and ruin the story, the stars do what they do best in the end.

They help lovers keep their promises.

PART 04: WENDY DARLING

It’s been difficult, tracking the years since she flew away from Neverland. Wendy Darling may once have been punctual, but there is a lilt to her understanding of time now – a wildness that makes the days smooth as honey or as quick as a waterfall.

When she looks up, one day, she is on the cusp of fifteen, living with near a dozen brothers and mother to the lot of them, as much as her own mother is. The next time she looks out the window, she’s a fresh eighteen, and John is announcing his intention to head into the City of London proper on the footsteps of his father.

Within a single breath – maybe more, maybe less – she is in the City herself. She has a leather bag in one hand and a thick coat over her shoulders to brace against winter’s chill. Wendy comes to a near stop on the south bank of the Thames and has to remind herself, slowly, how she came to be where she is and where, precisely, she’s supposed to be going.

(There are other wriggling memories living in Wendy’s head – Neverland and Peter and a port; some port she swears she knows but that Mother Darling has tucked into one of her smallest boxes, only to be opened when her mind slips between thoughts and lingers. Lingers.)

The present, as it stands, comes back to her in pieces. She is twenty two; the leather bag in her hands carries those things she needs with her to nanny the Pensey children on the other side of the river; she is meant to meet John in the city for lunch before she settles into the Pensey house for the evening, where the parents will out on some endeavor or another while Wendy forces the children to bathe and drink their medicine and fall asleep listening to stories that sound somehow both false and true.

Wendy presses a hand to her heart and breathes in the crisp winter air. She folds those stories into their crisp lines, closes her eyes – and carries on. John will be cross with her if she makes him late to his afternoon meetings, so she ought to do what she can to hurry.

Bag in hand, she marches from the City and down to the bank, where she debates a ferry ride in favor of the trek across the Thames’ many bridges.

Soldiers march past in their crisp uniforms as she stands in the snow. Wendy watches them go with an idle eye and quietly – so quietly that even God in Heaven may not hear her – gives thanks that John has not yet seen them. He is new to the bank and still young in those ways that would see him gallivanting off to war at the first chance, convinced in his own mind of his immortality.

One of the soldiers catches Wendy’s inattentive eye and mistakes her winter flush for embarrassment. He glances forward towards his officer, then reaches up and salutes – a subtle thing.

Wendy sees, all the same, and tries to ignore the pang of dread in her stomach. She smiles politely, then turns away, moving in the opposite direction and towards the nearest bridge. She’s spent enough money on lunch today; the ferry – and its soldiers – can be saved for another time.

If the soldier is disappointed to see her go, Wendy does not look back to check.

(Up ahead, there is a glimmer near her bridge of choice; a thin veil, almost silver in the gray of winter. Wendy does not see it, too busy straightening her coat and ignoring the soldiers behind her, but between one blink and the next, it is there and gone – and it leaves a gift for her in its wake.)

All at once, she stumbles into someone’s chest – someone tall and strong and bedecked in an entirely inappropriate red coat. Wendy’s leather bag goes flying, but a hand comes and secures her waist before she can slip and fall.

“Careful, ma’am,” comes the accent of an Eton-educated man. “It’s a cold one today.”

“Thank you,” Wendy says, gently extracting herself from the stranger’s grip. She looks up with an apology, but it freezes on the tip of her tongue.

Because she knows him.

He’s a handsome man, far lovelier than he should be. His hair is too long for the fashion of the day, but it curls at the ends of the ponytail he keeps it in. His red coat demands attention in their small square, though one of its long sleeves hangs back at his side. Wendy glances down, as inconspicuous as can be, and is not surprised to see the gleam of silver peeking at her from underneath.

“I’m so sorry,” she says, the words spilling from her far later than they should. Almost on instinct, she backs away – but then the stranger (he’s not) moves with her, gathering up a series of handkerchiefs that have thrown themselves from her bag and into the gathering snow.

He doesn’t smile at her as he hands them over – more smirks, if she is to label the thing. As the two of them part ways, she sees him press a hand to his forehead as though to salute her.

Before she can demand his name, how he got here – anything at all – he is striding away, long steps taking him around the nearest corner. Too late, she thinks to chase after him, but by the time she reaches the corner herself, his red coat has disappeared into the afternoon crowd.

Wendy – cannot bring herself to move from the spot.

(If she tries hard enough – on those sleepless nights, in the middle of the day – she can still smell the saltwater that lapped against Neverland’s shores. She can hear the laughter of her brother-sons and the beating of the island’s heart drum.

But only in those deepest dreams, when she finds herself wandering the island on her own, does she fancy finding a port among the banana leaves and sand. Peter denied such a place’s existence when she called Neverland home, and trusting him, she’d forgotten about it.)

Wendy stares after Captain Jas. Hook as he takes to London’s streets, as confident as he was out at sea.

…

...

John will forgive her if she does not make it to lunch in time, but the Penseys won’t let her keep her appointment. Their bad review will scuttle her chances at nursery work in the city’s upper side, leaving her to move further south or onto a new career.

Wendy looks back at the Thames and listens as hard as she can for the crack of ice; for the sound of snow melting on the water.

The cold stings her ungloved hands.

She looks down – and where there wasn’t one before, there is now a black, gleaming opal on her wedded finger.

...

...

Red Handed Jill swears.

(John, bless him, does forgive her when she arrives at the end of his lunch hour, tussled and some of her supplies lost for good. He is too busy trying to make his way back into the City to notice the ring still on her finger – but the Penseys, when she arrives at their doorsteps, do. Wendy steps through that front door with a mad pirate’s grin and lets them assume what they will.)

PART 05: EPILOGUE

Halfway across London from the Pensey’s provincial home, Jas. Hook settles down in a proper English pub for the first time in hundreds of years. He orders himself a pint and savors it all; savors the sound of dull gossip and the taste of fish fried in hot oil.

Halfway through the meal, he pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and sets it on the bar. The bartender pays it no mind, too busy serving his customers, but it holds the ex-captain’s eye for quite some time.

There is a scrawling, there, less handwriting than desperate ink. An address – a family home.

Red Handed Jill had all but shoved it at him as he’d went, then led him on a merry chase with more than two sets of memories in his head. He’d watched her with her brother over lunch, then walked with her to the ferry and her appointment.

They’d – spoken.

They’d remembered.

(He’d kissed her knuckles and not explained how he’d come to lose his hand, for the truth is, it was Pan who fed the blasted thing to a crocodile just as much as it was a falling mast somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic. She’d touched his cheek and caressed his curls until she realized what she was doing, at which point she’d flushed and hurried further down the lane.)

There were no apologies between them for that strange time of trial; no excuses for either one to give. There was only – quiet. Acceptance. Hesitation, on her part, but he could understand. He may have been naught but a tawdry sailor (pirate), but he was also a gentleman.

And so he’d let her go and had not followed when she’d bid him to stay. He’d taken her handkerchief and promised to return it, smiling as he did.

(And Captain Hook might live on forever, but so too may he be forgotten. What matters most is the man and the woman on opposite ends of the Thames, staring across waters they know they can cross to come back home again.)

***

(And above the both of them, even in the middle of the day, the stars sang and sang and sang.)

**Author's Note:**

> You _could_ play a drinking game where you take a sip every time I use parentheses, but I don't recommend it.


End file.
